I see, said the blind man, and he picked up a hammer and saw. Not blindness, exactly, but a very objective and analytical kind of seeing is required to cut down a tree, or to cut one up that has fallen on its own and may be spring-loaded with hidden stresses. Especially in a second-growth hardwood forest, where trees aren’t so massive that their falling will always follow a straight line, the logger must stay focused on the play of forces, ready to jump back at a moment’s notice.
Click photo for larger view.
But as time passes and the new surfaces made by a chainsaw begin to weather, strange things can happen. Those few minutes filled with the shriek and stink of the saw can acquire a patina of legend, in the way that violence so often seems to impart a glow of significance to the grayness of the ordinary.
But forget all that and look at the sawn wood. Should we be surprised if something that once passed messages between the sun and the underground kingdoms of the fungi should retain, even in its severed parts, a bit of magic?
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Submissions to the 18th edition of the Festival of the Trees are due by Thursday. See here for details.
Nice post, Dave, and wonderful photos. I’ll include the post in the soon-to-come December Festival of the Trees.
Love the patterns! Wonderful images, real magic.
Great textures.
The forests in the Ozarks are most second growth hardwood (mixed with pine) too. That combined with numerous ice damaged branches above demands extreme care when felling a tree.
Thanks, all. Hi, Marvin. Yeah, I’ve heard that loggers from the west coast really don’t like to come east, that our forests scare them — though that may be simply the sort of thing that eastern loggers like to tell themselves to make up for cutting down such comparatively wimpy trees!
Ooh, stars falling into a black hole!
Love the last part of this, and that galaxy of stars!
Thanks. Interesting — I didn’t expect that last photo to be the one people would comment on, I guess because we have several log-ends with that kind of fungus, and it’s become a familiar sight for me.
‘Those few minutes filled with the shriek and stink of the saw can acquire a patina of legend, in the way that violence so often seems to impart a glow of significance to the grayness of the ordinary. ‘
That, with the pictures, the second in particular, quite shivery!